Tag Archives: Illinois

April 24, 2012 · 8:00 pm

Blue for the Union, Grey for the Confederacy, Pink for the Girls

I forgot about this picture I snapped from that weekend in Springfield, until this afternoon when the super awesome Peggy Orenstein (author of Cinderella Ate My Daughter) retweeted it.

This is in the extensively stocked gift shop of the Lincoln Museum (which was altogether fabulous, by the way). Among the mugs, aprons, puzzles, keychains, rock candy (?) and magnets are various period costumes for kids. Awesome kids, by the way, because awesome kids like to dress up as historical figures.*

And then, amidst the bonnets and wooden rifles and whatnot, sit the soldier caps. Blue for the Union, grey for the Confederacy. And pink, of course, for the girls.

My beef is not with the color pink. I happen to be wearing pink nail polish as I type this. I like pink a whole lot. My beef is with the “othering” of products for girls. Legos (generic) are for boys, Lego Friends (the special pink version) are for girls. Jenga is the generic, pink Girl Talk Jenga is for girls.

Image via Sociological Images

It’s like we think that women are some minority, instead of half of the population. It’s bad enough that we feel the need to divide products and label them so exclusively, but must we pretend that the default is male and the weird little offshoot product is female?

Regarding historical costumes specifically, we can’t retroactively change the color of the uniforms in the Civil War to suit our narrow gender assumptions. If you want to buy your daughter a cap, buy her a blue or grey cap, and if she’s the kind of girl that wants Civil War soldier garb, she’ll get over it.

*1997, Abraham Lincoln. 2011, Rosie the Riveter. 

Related Post: Why do girls need special Legos?

Related Post: I’m too pretty to do math.

 

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April 10, 2012 · 7:16 pm

Lincoln

Last Easter, I got a tad overly enthuasiastic about Easter egg decoration, so this year I saved my geeky freak out for something truly deserving: The Abraham Lincoln Presidential Museum in Springfield, IL.

If you’ve been to many a museum, as I have, you know the difference between a museum that fosters conversation, presents controversial history maturely, appeals to different learning styles, and makes academic content seem fresh and exciting, and a museum that is essentially a bunch of laminated post-it notes. This museum was most definitely the former.

Take a minute and guess how many people died in the Civil War, both sides combined. Perhaps this figure was imprinted on your brain in elementary school, but I missed the boat on the sheer magnitude of death. My guess would have been about 200,000 (which seems astronomically high). The actual tally is about 1.3 million. MILLION. And to make that number stick in your heart and not just your head, you sit on a bench and watch a four minute play-by-play as the body count climbs into six, then seven digits. It’s brutal, but effective.

To understand the election of 1860, the late Tim Russert explains the four candidates and their platforms in contemporary terms. There are even faux campaign ads.

And the wax figurines! Creepy? A bit, but also amazing! Some photos to capture the trip:

Sojourner Truth's awesome wax hands

There was a whole gallery of political cartoons

"Mary is the most preposterous looking female I never saw. She looks like a damned old Irish washerwoman dressed out for a Sunday"

Lincoln lounging in his law office. Reminds me of my dad.

Related Post: Patriot’s Day in MA. 

Related Post: How NOT to teach eighth grade history.

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April 7, 2012 · 6:04 pm

Land of…

Springfield, IL

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March 20, 2012 · 4:31 pm

Election Day

I feel extremely lucky to be a Democrat this primary season. The choices Republicans are facing are none too pleasant, and I don’t envy them the ballots they’re casting today in Illinois. Lucky for us, there’s nothing on the line. Oh wait, yes there is, a billion other congressional, judicial and local elections. Go vote (if you live in IL…).

Think it doesn’t matter? My alderman ended up in a run-off and won by about 200 votes. Your vote matters infinitely more in local and State elections, simply because so few people bother to go the polls. So go to the polls. Right now. Do it. It will feel great and they may give you a sticker.

But who to vote for? You can go all out and read up on every candidate, but who has that kind of time? I pick a few people or organizations I trust (like my alderman, a media outlet,  Planned Parenthood) and check their lists of endorsed candidates. I promise you someone else has done all the research you would have done were you a more organized and efficient person. Print your list and head to the polls.

Related Post: Remember that one time I met a Republican?

Related Post: A chart on marriage equality from last election season.

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May 29, 2011 · 2:19 pm

Sunday Scraps 12

1. HUMOR: Chelsea Handler on being obnoxious, on the genderized word “raunchy,” on having an abortion at 16.

2. SEX EDUCATION: Finally, something sane out of the Illinois legislature. Including contraception in sex education, what a novel idea!

3. FIERCE: My Beyonce crush continues to grow with this charming acceptance speech at the Billboard Music Awards. “I love me some Jay Z!” I always forget they’re married!

4. ART: A monkey could do that! O RLY? A Boston College study shows that people actually do prefer “real” abstract art to crap that kids and monkeys do. On the other hand… it was a pretty small sample size and personally, I can’t tell the difference.

5. ROMANCE: The Frenemy has the worst pick-up email ever, includes a) his “1,100 screaming traders” at his “very successful private equity firm,” b) a sailboat, and c) no fewer than FOUR phone numbers.

6. DOLLARS: The income gap between men and women widens the more degrees you have. So from a gender equity position, I should have dropped out a long time ago.

Related Post: Let’s backtrack for a change, and see where we were 2 months ago (Cleveland, Chris Brown, The Wire, vintage condoms, etc).

Related Post: And 1 month ago (Brazilian volleyball players, gay marriage, skinny jeans, fake pregnancies, etc).

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May 6, 2011 · 2:15 pm

Medically Accurate and Age-Appropriate

On Tuesday, the Illinois State Senate voted against a measure to ensure that sex-education in its school districts was “medically accurate and ‘age-appropriate’.” You might think those were two easily agreed-upon criteria and you would be wrong.

“Who determines what’s age-appropriate? The legislature? Let them (local school districts) decide what’s age-appropriate. Let them decide what’s medically accurate. They don’t need our help.” – Kyle McCarter (R-Lebanon)

Maybe State Senator McCarter can make a case for subjectivity on “age-appropriateness,” but “Let them decide what’s medically accurate” strikes me as the worst advice of all time. Condoms, when used correctly, reduce the likelihood of STD transmission and pregnancy. That’s medically accurate. About half of high school students in Illinois will cop to having sexual intercourse. That’s not medical, per se, but it’s accurate.

Currently each school district makes its own decisions about how sex education is taught, but this provision stresses abstinence as the only sure way to avoid pregnancy and STDs, but includes some content on condom use and safe sex. Oooh, scandalous!

Black and Hispanic teens in Illinois are three times more likely to get get pregnant than their white peers. Ensuring that all Illinois teens who receive sex education receive medically accurate information would be a step in the right direction.

“I want to submit to everybody in this room, if you are going to press that button, and it says no, you want to put that red light on, I just have one question: did you abstain until you were married? Because if you did not, and you press that button, that is the epitome of hypocrisy.” – Linda Holmes (D-Aurora)

Thank you, Senator Holmes, for reminding all of Illinois’ State Senators of their wayward pasts. How I wish she’d called out Senator McCarter.

Related Post: Why teen pregnancy is such a problem in Chicago and one school’s response.

Related Post: See? Teenagers want sex education! They’re making clever videos demanding it!

Related Post: A road map for understanding why conservatives have such a hard time with sex education.

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